Try, Try Again
by ladyoflilacs
Summary: Seven years after the war, Harry Potter cannot shake the feeling that all is not yet well in the world. Seeking closure, he develops an obsession with the life and thoughts of Tom Riddle. And someone is not at all pleased with Harry's prying. HPTR slash.


**DISCLAIMER:** They're not mine, sadly, and I'm not making any money by writing this story.

**SUMMARY:** Seven years after the war, Harry Potter cannot shake the feeling that all is not yet well in the world. He develops an obsession with the life and thoughts of Tom Riddle, launching him on a wild chase for closure. And someone is not at all pleased with Harry's prying. HPTR.

**WARNINGS:** Explicit language, eventual explicit sex.

**A/N:** This has been a little bunny in the back of my mind since January. It's going to be relatively short - only about four or five parts, about 20k words total. I needed a bit of a break from Freefall - I've really been struggling with the latest chapter - but it is not discontinued or on hiatus or anything. An update is coming soon, I swear.

No beta for this, but big thanks to Megii for her help ironing out some of the kinks, and to everyone over at Harrymort for being lovely, supportive people.

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><p>The edges of Tom Riddle's face are faded, like a book whose pages have been turned so many times over that they have begun to wear out. But the age and overuse of the memory cannot damper the intensity in Tom's eyes as they fix the fat, balding man in front of him with a fierce, gripping stare.<p>

_Nervous excitement_. _Hope. _All of the boy's subtle nuances are transformed into descriptive words, neatly catalogued and filed away, like notes prepared for a test.

"Can you only split your soul once?" Riddle is saying eagerly. "I mean, for instance, isn't seven the most powerful number, wouldn't seven-?"

"Merlin, Tom! Seven? You would need to kill seven people!" Slughorn dabs anxiously at his forehead, where a thin sheen of sweat has broken out. Riddle seems outwardly unperturbed by the outburst, but where his hands are folded neatly behind his back, his thumb begins to make slow, steady circles against his wrist. _Anxiety. A little fear. _

Slughorn's eyes dart nervously around the shadows of the room, and then again to the door. Perhaps he feels that someone is watching their conversation with attention so rapt that it approaches

(_obsession_)

something quite unnatural. He couldn't have possibly known, all those years ago, but here he is now, his eyes scouring every crevice of the room as though he can feel the eyes on him, judging him, memorizing him. But there is no one in the shadows. There is no one at the door.

Their voyeur is standing right in front of them.

"This is all hypothetical, isn't it?" Slughorn says after a few long moments, when he has finally convinced himself that there is no one but he and Tom. "Simply academic."

Tom is nearly holding his breath with anticipation.

"Yes sir, of course."

And there is the telling flicker in Riddle's eyes, the very subtle twitch of the corner of his mouth, as though trying to suppress the slightest of smirks. _He's proud of himself, the smug bastard._ Slughorn may have believed that Riddle was telling the truth, but from where Harry Potter stands in the center of the fading office, he can easily recognize every one of the habits that betrays Tom Riddle's lie.

Slughorn begins to babble again, words that Harry has heard so many times now he can repeat them in his sleep. Harry is not interested in what Slughorn has to say. Slowly, the young man from the future walks up to Riddle until he is standing directly before him.

Riddle stares straight through him, unseeing. He is tall and unnervingly handsome. Full lips, gray eyes, a long, regal nose - this boy is lightyears away from the monster that Harry sent screaming to his death inside Hogwarts Great Hall. Frowning, Harry examines the teenager's eyes, looks up and down his school uniform, lets his eyes settle on Tom's mouth. Searching, searching, searching for any small detail that he might have missed, anything at all - a small tear in Riddle's robes, a brief clenching of his fingers, something else that might tell him something, anything.

But all too soon, Riddle allows his lips to curl into a small, sinister smile - because everything that Tom Riddle does, every movement, every breath, every smile and frown and sigh, is the result of Tom's explicit control. His lungs fill only when he tells them to; his lips quirk, his eyebrows lift, his hands fold, only because Riddle allows them to do so.

_Or so he thinks. _Because Harry knows better. He knows this memory as well as his most oft-visited nightmares, and it has brought him to the conclusion that there is more to Tom Riddle's actions than perhaps even Riddle himself realizes.

"I won't say a word, sir," the future Dark Lord says. His face begins to lose its color, melting into the office which is fading around him.

_I won't say a word, sir_.

The voice follows Harry as he gives in to the familiar experience of falling, tumbling, head over heels, until he rolls out of his Penseive for the second time that day and the eighth time that week.

There is a moment of disorientation where Harry sways a little, his eyes adjusting to the bright morning light that is such a contrast to the dark potion master's office. He blinks and looks around him, heaves a great sigh. His feet planted firmly on the floor of his flat again, Harry runs a hand through his hair, feeling even more frustrated than he had when he'd started this whole mess of an investigation.

Harry Potter has a life that leaves him wanting for nothing. At the ripe age of twenty-four, he is one of the best Aurors in the Ministry, having turned down two different spots on major-league national Quidditch teams - he believes that his abilities are put to better use against criminals than Snitches. Even so, he can hardly go anywhere without people tripping over themselves to accommodate him, and he is often offered complimentary service at restaurants, theater houses, shops - which he just as often turns down, considering the rather large fortune in his Gringotts vault that consists of the Potter inheritance, his earnings as an Auror, and the anonymous donations that refuse to find their way back to their senders.

Beautiful women seem to turn up everywhere that Harry goes, batting their eyelashes and showing off blinding teeth as they introduce themselves. Hell, he had even - briefly - occupied the heart of the beautiful and intelligent Ginny Weasley, whom he'd been expected to marry ever since they'd started dating again shortly after the war.

His life is perfect. He is a hero, a savior, a celebrity.

And yet, he cannot shake the feeling that something is missing.

Harry's wards give a warning chime. Swearing, Harry straightens up abruptly, wheeling about and looking frantically for his wand. He finds it lying haphazardly on his desk, and he is just raising it in the air to send the Penseive back into its cabinet when Hermione comes stumbling out of the Floo.

_Rats_.

"Morning, Hermione!" Harry nearly trips over his feet in his efforts to put himself between the Penseive and his friend.

He isn't quick enough. Hermione's eyes dart to the magical device behind him and narrow as she frowns..

"Are you still obsessing over those memories, then?" she asks him. She folds her arms across her chest, lifting an incredulous eyebrow. _Disapproval. Disappointment_. It's uncanny how easily he's fallen into the habit since he first began the meticulous study of Tom Riddle's tics. Harry wonders if his own emotions are as plain on his face, if his guilt is as obvious as Hermione's disapproval. Riddle would have known how to disguise guilt perfectly, transforming it into nonchalance with practiced ease. Not for the first time, Harry wishes that he could speak to the Tom Riddle of 1945, perhaps even learn from him.

"I'm not obsessing." Harry turns around to get one last glimpse of the memory inside - Riddle's face swimming in the silvery pool of the Penseive - before he flicks his wand and sends it gliding back into his cabinet.

"You've only seen them about a thousand times by now." Hermione expression shifts rapidly from disappointment to pity, though her arms are still crossed in that way that they used to whenever she chastised him for his lack of attention in class. "Honestly, Harry, I don't even understand why you look at them so often. The war is over. Voldemort's dead."

Harry sighs impatiently. "I know, Hermione. I _was _the one to off him, after all." His fingers stray without his permission to his hair, where he directs his frustration toward the wayward strands that refuse to lie flat. "But there's something that just feels so _wrong_. He's come back so many times - something just tells me that he isn't really gone."

Hermione furrows her eyebrows. She places a comforting hand on his arm, and Harry can anticipate her next words effortlessly, knows them almost as well as he knows the memories. They have had this conversation often enough, after all.

"I know you're expecting it to feel … _different_, now that he's dead," she tells him, her voice soft and gentle. "But the war's been over for seven years, Harry. Don't you think he would have made some sort of appearance by now?"

Harry shrugs her hand off of his shoulder, attempts a smile. "I know you didn't come here to criticize the way I spend my Saturday mornings." He eyes the box of pamphlets tucked under her arm. "The march at the Ministry is in less than an hour, isn't it? What's up?"

Harry wishes almost immediately that he hadn't asked. Hermione bites her lip shyly, her eyes darting away. A pit of foreboding tightens in his stomach; Hermione very rarely has any problem saying what's on her mind.

"Well, actually, I was wondering," she begins, and then shakes her head, "I mean, Ronald and I were _both _wondering, that is, if perhaps you wanted to come over for dinner tonight?"

The pit in his stomach clenches and forms a great big ball. No wonder she'd been reluctant to share. "Are you sure? I was still under the impression that I wasn't welcome." Harry can't seem to extract the bitterness from his voice, so he simply looks away, refusing to be moved by the pain in Hermione's eyes.

"It's been six weeks, Harry," Hermione says. She reaches out and touches his arm again. "This is just silly, really. The two of you have gotten through much worse in the past."

"Well perhaps this is the last straw." Harry walks away from her toward the window by the cabinet, his mind wandering to the Penseive within, which is where he really wants to be spending his time right now. "He's picked his side, and that's that."

"For Merlin's sake, she's his sister, Harry!" Hermione says. She follows him to the window, that damn hand back on his shoulder again. "Of course he's going to be torn up about it - "

"And you think that I wasn't?" Harry rounds on her, his temper dangerously close to breaking. "She broke it off with me, Hermione. How the hell is he going to blame me for that?"

Hermione's gaze flickers fleetingly to the cabinet beside them. It only lingers there for the briefest of seconds, and Harry presses the heel of his palm against his eyes, but it is enough; he is instantly transported to La Magia d'Italia, the memory playing like a film behind his eyelids.

'_One night, Harry! One night, that's all I asked for, and you _still _can't shut well enough up about it! He's dead!_'

'_He's still out there, Gin_,' Harry had insisted, trying to keep his voice low to avoid drawing attention - a fruitless endeavor, as half the restaurant had been staring at their table at this point. '_I wish that you would just trust me! I know he is, I would bet anything on it -'_

'_Even our relationship?' _she'd demanded, her eyes tearing up.

Harry's eyebrows had shot up, his mouth dropping open, finding it hard to think in his hot and uncomfortable dress robes. There was a pause, two heartbeats of silence in which Harry had scrambled desperately for words that would make her stay - but it was too late. Ginny had already shoved her chair away from the table with a dramatic _scrape_, tears spilling over her eyelashes, streaming makeup down her cheeks. An inappropriate time, surely, to remember how pretty she was, but there Harry had sat, gaping at his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend and unable to think of anything but how much nicer she looked when she was crying.

'_You're beautiful,'_ he said before he could stop himself.

'_And you're a bastard_.' She threw her napkin on the table, her eyes an angry shade of bloodshot. '_My brothers will hex your fucking balls off if you try to Floo me.'_

And then she had turned on her heel and walked out the restaurant, which had fallen into stunned silence as the argument had escalated.

"She didn't deserve him anyway," Emeridge Plinker had been quoted saying in that week's Witch Weekly. "Never liked red-heads; feisty tempers! He needs a nice blonde - take my daughter, for example! Pretty, calm little thing! Now _that's _a wife for Harry Potter!"

"I think he should have treated her better," argued Susie Miggins, a reported eyewitness at the restaurant that evening. "The war didn't leave him right in the head, I say. She's better off without him."

That was all six weeks ago. Harry hasn't spoken to Ginny since - has been reluctant to leave his flat for very much other than work and groceries, really - and he likes it that way. An unexpected development, surely, but it's given him a lot more time to spend lurking through his Penseive.

Except for when Hermione comes and pays him a visit.

"Just let it go," she pleads now, her hand refusing to move from his shoulder. "I'm begging Ron to as well. It's just one night. Please, Harry."

"I'll think about it," he finally says, relenting, if only to get her off his back. He shrugs her off his shoulder and smiles weakly at the pamphlets. "You'd better get going, Hermione. Those house elves aren't going to march for themselves."

"Very funny," she says, and stands up on her tip-toes to kiss him lightly on the cheek. "Seven o'clock. I'll be expecting you."

"I'll think about it," he reminds her as she heads back to the Floo. She gives a little wave, and then she is swallowed up by green flame, leaving him alone in his flat once more.

Harry tries to count to ten to make sure that she's really gone - _one, two, four_ - but he's back at the cabinet before he can stop himself, his fingers deftly undoing the lock. Relief opens up inside of him as Tom Riddle shimmers into focus at the surface of the Penseive, all charm and quiet sophistication. He is still there; the memory is still intact.

But Harry forces himself to close the cabinet door and straighten his robes. Contrary to Hermione's admonishments, this is not how Harry plans to spend his entire Saturday afternoon. He imagines the shock in Ginny's eyes when she learns he's finally found something useful; it puts a smug grin on his face as he throws his invisibility cloak over his shoulders, sparing one last glance for the cabinet that holds his favorite secret.

_You can't hide from me, Tom_.

He closes his eyes, calls his destination to the front of his mind (_a dark, dingy street that reeks of urine and fear)_, and vanishes from his flat with a soft _pop_.

* * *

><p>Harry has not been to Borgin and Burkes on his own since he was twelve years old - and without a team of Aurors at his back, it is somehow just as intimidating as it was in his second year. The news of an Auror raid has not emptied Knockturn Alley of its typical shady crowd, and many dark shapes lurk in the shadows, the hum of sinister, Dark magic sliding across his bones. Shivering, Harry pulls his cloak of invisibility tighter around his body and heads for the narrow alley that runs alongside the shop.<p>

The rear door opens with a whispered spell, and Harry pushes it open, wincing as the hinges squeak with disuse. The room is dark and musty; it could contain any number of terrors in its shadows. But Harry has been trained by the Ministry to recognize magical signatures, and even though Dark magic thickens the air, he does not sense another human inside. He steps through the door, closing it softly behind him, muffling the sounds from the street outside and making the darkness complete.

He knows the way to the secret room, even though old Borgin thinks he has successfully kept it hidden from the Aurors. Harry realizes how much trouble he can get in for this with the Department - on a rogue mission, exploiting top-secret Ministry information, potentially endangering future raids - but he knows that he won't get caught. He is a master of using the darkness and his cloak, his weapons of secrecy; he has never been caught during his various escapades, both while still in Hogwarts and after it.

Harry kneels down, feels around on the wooden floor until his fingers find the place they are seeking, magic surging up into his fingertips. His wand draws a pattern on the floorboard, taps in the middle, and a handle materializes. Another spell, and it swings open, revealing a small door cut into the floor. The briefest of hesitations, and then he is climbing through it, driven by an adrenaline rush that he hasn't experienced since his school days.

It is darker down here, and the buzz of Dark magic has reached a swelling pitch, a tangible heat against his skin. Harry's heart is pounding, and he is _alive_.

"_Lumos_," he whispers. His wand lights up at the command, chasing the shadows into the corners of the room. Harry keeps his ears open and attentive as his gaze sweeps over the room; one sound, one creak to suggest that someone is approaching from above, and his wand will disappear back into his cloak and leave him enveloped in invisibility and safe, safe darkness.

It is a small room, but it is crowded with shelves and chests, tables and boxes that clearly contain every manner of illegal objects. This is not the typical Borgin and Burkes collection of questionable artifacts that Borgin displays so casually on the storefront. There is something that looks suspiciously like a human heart on the shelf beating directly in front of Harry's face, and a large, obsidian chest groans in the corner of the room. But Harry is not here to gather evidence to apprehend Borgin for his illicit business practices. If there is anything that Tom Riddle left behind from his times as a buyer at Borgin and Burke's, Harry is sure that it will be in this room.

He begins with the assortment of rings and amulets on the table. He does not touch any of them - his experience in the Auror department has taught him _something, _at least - but a quick passing of his wand over the table does not reveal Voldemort's trace on any of them. He moves to the books on the shelf next - adrenaline, so sweet and familiar in his veins - eyes flicking over texts that have been banned from publication for centuries. Wand passing over each title, searching, searching for anything that might interest the young, curious Tom Riddle, anywhere that might lead Harry to his next clue -

His wand buzzes gently beneath his fingertips - a magical trace that matches that of Tom Riddle's, extracted from the ruins of the tattered diary last week in preparation for this very moment. Harry's green eyes widen in the wandlight, heart pounding with furious triumph as they take in the label: _The Magick of Immortalite._

There is a loud crash right above his head, and Harry nearly jumps out of his skin, wand slipping from his fingers. He leaps after it - "_Nox!"_ - but it is too late; the trapdoor above his head has swung open, and Harry freezes, not moving, not breathing. Only the thin layer of his invisibility cloak lies between him and his intruder.

"_Ructo_," says a cold voice, and the floor ripples and then throws him violently upward. Harry goes flying through the floor, up and out from the secret room. He rolls across the wooden floorboards, his head slamming against a wall - and in his desperation to keep his wand between his fingers, the invisibility cloak catches on a table leg and is torn from his shoulders.

Dark laughter, from at least two different voices - _there's more than one, _Harry registers, his head pounding where a lump is beginning to blossom. He pushes himself quickly to his feet, his mouth just forming the words of a Stunning spell - and then his wand is ripped from his fingers with a flash of red light, leaving him defenseless.

"Well if it isn't _Harry Potter,_" says Borgin, who is looming over Harry with a shadowed face. Harry's holly wand rolls casually between the shopkeeper's fingers. Harry backs against the wall, scowling, even as his eyes dart around the room, looking for an escape. But there are four other men who stand behind Borgin, all just as imposing; Harry is outnumbered badly, and they already have his wand.

"I'm here on official Ministry business," says Harry, trying to look confident through the haze of pain from his head. "Now, if you'll please - "

"Bollocks," says one of the men behind Borgin, smirking. Harry recognizes him as a Death Eater from the post-war trials; he escaped charges by providing the Ministry with valuable information, a practice that Harry did - and still does, for that matter - strongly oppose. "He doesn't have a warrant. Show us your warrant, Potter."

"That's Auror Potter," Harry says, heart flying into his throat. _You are going to be in so much trouble._ "And a warrant is unnecessary when - "

"When a shopkeeper willingly shows an official into his shop, and only then," finishes Borgin, folding his arms. "I don't believe I ever gave you permission to skulk around my personal quarters, did I, Potter?"

Harry's mind is reeling as he tries to find a way out of this - but he still doesn't have his wand, and the other men are closing in, wands pointed at him. "But Mr. Borgin, I had reason to believe that there was - was something dangerous being kept in this shop - "

"And they sent you all by yourself?" says a third man with an awful smile. "_Bollocks_."

A wand is shoved up against his throat while one of Borgin's associates examines his cloak. The Death Eater's breath is hot and reeking against his face. "I believe we have cause to defend ourselves here, don't we, boys? Crazy war hero, that Potter - the paper says he's touched in the head since he broke it off with that pretty little witch."

"He must be, to have broken it off with that sweet little thing," says the other man with a gruff laugh. "The things I would do to her."

"Don't talk about Ginny that way!" Harry snarls, thrashing out to fly at the other man - but there is a flash of orange light, and he is thrown back against the wall, his already pounding head splitting with pain.

"A menace to society," says Borgin, hands fisting into Harry's shirt, "and it won't do to let him go running to the Ministry to tell them about what's hiding under the back room, would it?"

The door to the alleyway crashes open very suddenly, and dazzling sunlight floods into the room. All five of his attackers turn to stare in shock at the intruder. A hooded figure stands in the doorway, his silhouette tall and intimidating. Power rolls off of him in waves, infecting the room with its force; Harry shivers.

"Leave him," says the intruder coolly. Borgin drops Harry like he has been burned; three of the four men are exchanging baffled glances, but the Death Eater makes a terrified noises and flees from the room.

"His wand," says the man, still addressing Borgin. The shopkeeper drops that as well, backing toward the entrance to the storefront. Harry has only seen Borgin look so afraid when the Aurors arrived unexpectedly at his shop last year for a surprise raid that, infuriatingly, didn't turn up anything. "That will be all, Borgin."

"Yes," mutters Borgin, eyes still very wide; he all but runs from the back room, his three companions very close behind. Harry is left alone with the hooded stranger. The man's power is so potent that it frightens him; Harry knows that there is no way he would be able to take this man in a duel right now.

"What do you want with me?" says Harry, skull throbbing, knuckles white around his wand.

The man does not answer, but walks slowly toward Harry instead, studying the young Auror like a bird eyes a mouse. His face is still cast in shadow by his hood.

"Harry Potter, savior of the wizarding world," murmurs the man. He stops only a few inches away, uncomfortably close, but Harry still cannot see his face beneath the hood. "Do they teach the Aurors nothing anymore? How foolish you are, walking around the most dangerous corner of Britain in broad daylight."

"I know what I'm doing," Harry says darkly, his voice very low. "Let me see your face."

"Do you really?" The man sounds very amused. "Then I presume you must wish for death, for that's where your steps are headed."

"I'm here on official Ministry business," Harry protests.

"Poking around Borgin and Burkes without a warrant, in naught but a silly cloak," the man says softly. "That's a new low, even for you, Potter. So careless - you're losing your touch."

"Coward," Harry says viciously, his temper flaring. "You won't even show me your face."

The man chuckles, cold and humorless. He leans very close to Harry, nearly concealing him in the shadow of the black hood as well, and Harry's breath catches in his throat. The air crackles between them.

"I have no face," the man hisses, hot air and Dark magic against Harry's lips, and the young man shivers. "Be a good Auror, Potter, and do not come to this place again. You are interfering with forces far beyond your control."

And then he has pulled away, leaving Harry breathless and badly shaken. It is not until the man is at the door that Harry realizes he means to leave.

"Wait," Harry calls, but the man does not stop. "Who are you?"

He does pause then, head inclining slightly over his shoulder. "A vigilante of sorts," he finally answers, and Harry knows that he is smiling, even if he can't see it. "Much like yourself."

And then he steps into the sunlight, takes one last look at Harry, and vanishes without a sound.


End file.
